


words on paper

by psychobabblers



Category: Justice League (2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-28
Updated: 2017-11-28
Packaged: 2019-02-07 20:12:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12848655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psychobabblers/pseuds/psychobabblers
Summary: Lois Lane rereads some of Clark Kent’s work after his death.





	words on paper

There’s a small eulogy in the Daily Planet after Clark Kent’s death. He had not been one of their star reporters by any means, but he had been steadily earning a reputation as a steady, respectable journalist. There may have been more dedicated to him, if the same issue hadn’t covered Superman’s death as well.

Lois Lane had been one of the people who dismissed the idea of allocating more column inches to his eulogy, in favor of printing some more old Superman content. She was perfectly aware that some of her coworkers were upset with that, especially given the nature of her relationship with Clark Kent, but she remained adamant. And in the end, Perry White bowed to the wishes of his best reporter, and Clark Kent’s fiancé.

What they didn’t know - or at least only a few down at the archives - was that she’d gone to there after his death to collect copies of every article he’d written. They had helped her through the worst of it, the days when she thought the crushing grief would never end, the aching loss in a hard pit in her stomach that couldn’t settle. But eventually, somehow, it did. And it began with reading his articles.

Here, in his writing, in the words that he sat down to put to paper, she can hear his voice and see his smile. He chose every word that had been placed in this piece, she would think, and knew that within them some spark of his soul still lived on.

This was a strange time for her. She’d never given the idea of souls and such much thought beyond whatever belief system she had to research for a piece that required it. And it wasn’t that she was taking comfort in the idea that perhaps he was in Heaven or whatever the Kryptonian afterlife was. Eventually she figured out that it was just that these words were the closest she’d be to him again.

Sometimes during this time, she’d feel a vague sense of shame because even though she went almost straight back to work, she hung back to let others take the lead on the toughest assignments where once she might have jumped for them. No one said anything, but she knew people noticed.

What did she owe the world anyway, she would think on occasion, when when she noticed some looks, when the grief hit her again in the those late hours of the night when despair reigned. What was the world, that it deserved Superman or Clark Kent or Lois Lane?

She knew, dispassionately, that she was only thinking this way because she was still going through the grieving process, that eventually she would have enough of seeing others pursue the story leads that she knew she was better suited for. But when she couldn’t sleep at night in the wide empty bed, that future day seemed far away.

She didn’t want to turn the news on and see the endless memorial programs about Superman. She didn’t want to walk in the streets and see the black fabric draped everywhere. They seemed to her like an empty echo of her loss.

Because Clark Kent had died and no one had noticed.

Which was the point, of course. She knew that. Though Superman may have been the one to sweep her off her feet, it was Clark Kent who she loved. It was Clark who was _home_.

She couldn’t be the Lois Lane he fell in love with right now, and she was perversely glad he wasn’t around to see her like this. But that Lois was still in her somewhere, and she was waking up more and more every day.

But for now, she would go home to her empty apartment and try to find Clark’s smile in his words. The world would have to wait.

**Author's Note:**

> I admit that I was not a huge fan of Amy Adams' Lois Lane, but the scene where she apologizes for not being strong after Clark's death broke my heart.


End file.
